Eating @ Telok Ayer Market

26th June 2010. Written by Xin Li.

The Telok Ayer Market, more commonly known as Lau Pa Sat (“old market”) is a historic structure in Singapore located near the financial heart of Singapore. It was the first market located at the south bank of the Singapore River and later moved to Telok Ayer Street in 1823 when the land was acquired for more lucrative commercial use.

The former market first opened in 1825 and it extended over the sea, this was when the area in front of Telok Ayer Street was still a bay and jetties leading from the market allowed produce to be loaded and unloaded directly onto boats.

The market had to be demolished and moved to where it is today due to land reclamation works of the Telok Ayer Basin in the 1870s. The current structure was designed by Municipal Engineer James MacRitchie who adopted well-known architect, George Drumgoole Coleman’s octagonal design. The market was gazetted as a national monument on 6th July 1973.

http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_810_2005-01-11.html

Scallion Pancakes (4.00 SGD), an order by Michael from Shanghai Zhen Chi Xiang was too tough and taste wise, it was quite ordinary.

Stall 104 Dessert - Black Sesame Paste (2-3 SGD) was served cold. Unlike other black sesame paste we had, this turned out to be more grey than black and it was very watery. The four of us agreed that this was the weakest dish of the day.

Mang Kiko Lechon’s Roasted Pork Belly (6.00 SGD) was crackling delicious! Crispy, crackling layer of well-charred skin with a melt-in-your-mouth layer of fat or meat, this dish got thumbs up from all of us. The set comes with rice, sauce and soup as well.

Tian Pin’s Esplanade Bur Bur Cha Cha (2.50 SGD) – This colourful dessert can be found at the centre dessert stall. It came with colourful chewy jelly like bits, slices of agar gar, tapioca and sweet potato with shaved ice drizzled with sweet syrup. Nice dessert for a hot day and quite value for money.

Lunch times are normally packed during weekdays. The market gets very crowded at night when more stores open. They are well-known for their satay street near by. As we visited in the afternoon, some of the stores are not opened yet. I realized there are quite a few Filipino food stalls around here. Some people might be familiar with Wendy’s too.

Address:
18 Raffles Quay
Chinatown, Singapore